Genus Paraleochara Cameron, 1920

(Figs 9, 18, 27, 36, 44, 100–106, 119, 128)

Paraleochara Cameron, 1920: 275 (original description); Bernhauer & Scheerpeltz, 1926: 798 (catalogue of world species of Aleocharinae); Cameron, 1939: 623 (in key to British Indian genera of tribe Aleocharini), 662 (redescription), plate III (habitus figured).

Type species: Paraleochara fungivora Cameron, 1920: 276 (= Aleochara translata Walker, 1859), by original designation and monotypy.

Non-type material of the type species. P. fungivora: 1 unsexed, “ MALAY PENIN: / PAHANG, F.M.S. / Fraser’s Hill / HOUD’ / 19- 5- 1932 [HW: ‘Fraser’s Hill’, ‘HOUD’, ‘19- 5-’, only ‘[193] 2’.] // H. M. Pendlebury / F. M. S. / Museums. [US] // Paraleochara / fungivora / Cam. [HW] // Chicago Nat. Hist. Mus / (ex M. Cameron Colln. / by exchange with / Brit. Mus. Nat. Hist.)” (FMNH).

Diagnosis. Paraleochara can be distinguished and characterized from the other genera within the tribe Aleocharini as follows: body medium sized, pubescent, and strongly glossy; ligula elongate, somewhat acute apically; carina on each side of ventral side of head absent; each elytron with posterolateral corners not sinuate; legs long and slender, with 5-5-5 tarsal formula; intercoxal process of mesoventrite very short and wide, with broadly truncate posterior margin; intercoxal process of metaventrite exceptionally long, much longer than that of mesoventrite; female spermatheca with large spherical head, fused with its neck.

See Cameron (1920, 1939) and Park & Ahn (2010a) for further taxonomic information and references. Mouthpart characters of P. fungivora (as Paraleochara translata), the type species of the genus, have been described in detail (Sawada, 1982).

Comments. This genus includes only the type species from the Oriental region [Sri Lanka, Singapore, Borneo, Sulawesi, New Guinea (Pace, 2014); the Malay Peninsula (present study)] but we found another species from East Asia, discussed below. Paraleochara belongs to the Tetrasticta generic group, which consists of eight genera (see Maruyama, 2004b; Maruyama et al., 2011).